May 18: Picnic and Bingo
Me and Mel wanted to take advantage of our last free weekend before we left. Today, we had a picnic! This is something we had been wanting to do the entire trip. We realized we had no picnic food, so we went to Lidl’s first thing after we woke up. We got items to make sandwiches, we got donuts, and Mel got a baguette. We came back to the hotel to gather our picnic items and headed off to Christchurch. There is a very cute grassy area right behind the church which is less than a 5-minute walk from us. It is the perfect spot to have a picnic. We both ate PB+J sandwiches, I had one and Mel had two. We each had a bag of chips; I had popcorn and Mel had Bugels. We each had a donut, and Mel had her baguette. Whenever we were getting ready to leave, a seagull swooped in out of nowhere. Mel decided to feed it a Bugel. This resulted in the seagull swallowing it whole and making gagging motions shortly after. I truly thought Mel killed it. We ended up feeding it some baguette pieces, as well as feeding some pigeons. We then headed to a market that Robin and Heather had told us about. The market was in a park nearby and had a line of little shops. I saw this beautiful ring I stared at for like 5 minutes. I wanted it so bad, but it was one size too big. I almost bought it, but I held back. Mel did buy a book that she had been wanting since it was so cheap.
We hung around the apartment for the rest of the afternoon, working to catch up on our blogs. Time flew by so quickly because now it is time for Bingo! Me and Mel have been looking forward to Sunday night bingo since before we left for the trip. Me and Mel went with Ash, Paula, E, Ryan, and Sydney. Bingo was held at The George, which we had been to many times already. We thankfully got there in time to get in for free, but we unfortunately did not get a seat. We got our bingo cards and were instantly confused. I have been playing Bingo for the past 17 years of my life, and this isn’t bingo… I didn’t really think about the fact that there could be European bingo. Yet there is! The worst part is that the drag queen blatantly said they were not explaining the rules beforehand! All of us Americans started panicking thinking how are we supposed to play. The drag queen asked who all was from outside of the country. A group upstairs got called on. They said they were from Pennsylvania, so our entire group started SCREAMING. The drag queen notices us and said, “they are also from Pennsylvania, do you know them?” We obviously couldn’t see each other from where we were, but it was so cool we were all from the same state. There were a few performances before bingo started and about a half hours’ worth after bingo as well. Bingo here only had 2 rounds. The first round was worth a few hundred Euros, and the Jackpot round was worth 800 Euro. Since no one got the jackpot within the certain number of numbers, it got carried onto next week. They made the prize 200 Euro for the remainder of the round since they weren’t just going to leave us hanging. We did not win unfortunately, but I would definitely go back in the future. Me and Mel ended up staying about 45 minutes longer than the rest of the group dancing the night away. I am going to miss this when we go back home.
